


Crying in the Dark at 3am

by noxic



Series: Time Falls Away When I'm With You [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon Compliant, Depression, Evan just wants them to be okay again, Jared is gay as fuck but can't admit it, M/M, Oneshot, Pining, Self-Hatred, one-sided Jared/Evan (for now)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 09:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11205267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxic/pseuds/noxic
Summary: Months after everything went down, Jared and Evan still haven't made their peace yet. Unfortunately for Jared, not having Evan around makes life a lot harder to cope with. He knows what he has to do.Alternately: Jared is depressed but finally starts to get his shit together.





	Crying in the Dark at 3am

**Author's Note:**

> written in one sitting, completely unedited, and posted at 3am so have fun finding all my mistakes lmao

Jared, to his credit, survives the first couple of months of his freshman year of college before he completely freaks out.

He’s away at school only an hour from home, laying in his bunkbed at 3am while his roommate is off at a party somewhere across campus, and suddenly everything is too much. He’s willing to admit that his complete fucking meltdown wasn’t entirely out of the blue. The stress of maintaining his GPA so that he doesn’t lose his scholarship and cost his mom even more money than she’s already funnelling into his education is bad. The added weight of his complete lack of social grace is worse. The fact that he hasn’t eaten anything except cereal, eggs boiled on a contraband hot plate, and chicken-flavored instant ramen for the last two weeks both for lack of money and lack of time certainly doesn’t help. He’s been on edge for weeks and now it’s all coming to a head.

He thinks about how out of his depth he feels in every class, how awkward he feels when he looks around and sees nothing but unfamiliar faces. He thinks about every botched attempt at talking to someone since he arrived on campus, how his roommate doesn’t even like him enough to invite him to tag along to a party, and how none of this ever would have been a problem with Evan.

And then he starts to think about Evan.

Evan Hansen is Jared’s biggest weakness. If not for the fucking horrible way Jared tended to treat him back in high school, he’s almost sure that it would have been obvious to anyone who even caught a passing glance just how deep Jared had fallen.

He clutches his blanket tighter around his shoulders and thinks about the way he used to tease Evan, the way the other boy’s shoulders would fall as he tried to laugh off Jared’s unnecessary cruelty. He thinks about the way Evan’s voice faltered over the words “family friends” and the sick feeling that settled in his gut every time he heard them. Jared was the one who insisted that they maintain the illusion of separation; so why did he feel so fucking sick inside with every dip of Evan’s head, every glance away from Jared’s face, every stammer over those two fucking horrible words?

Jared knows why. He’s always known, and he hates himself for it. He hates the way he’s always treated the only person who’s ever stuck around, and even more than that he hates the reason why he does it.

Above all, he hates the fact that he has to mentally correct himself because that was why he had always done it. Past tense.

He and Evan hadn’t spoken in months. Months! Ever since Jared’s hurt cry of “Fuck you, Evan!” the two of them hadn’t said a word to each other. Or at least, for the most part they hadn’t. Evan had tried to text him only a few weeks after that. It had been the longest they’d ever gone without some form of communication, and Jared was feeling the pressure of not having his best friend around something awful. But he saw that text--Can we talk?--and just got mad all over again. He still missed Evan, but he let the anger win out all the same. So he locked his phone, put it on silent, and ignored the texts that would come his way in the months that followed. Eventually, Evan had stopped trying.

Now that Jared is officially on the brink of losing his goddamn mind, crying big ugly tears in the darkness of his college dorm with a heavy comforter wrapped tightly around his body, he remembers those texts.

God--he’s a right fucking mess. He always has been. He knows that. He knows that’s why he always kept Evan at arm’s length. Because he doesn’t want anyone to see all the bullshit he can feel festering inside every day of his life, let alone Evan.

He loves Evan too much to lose him like that. He thinks he’d die if Evan saw that part of him and hated it just as much as Jared hates himself.

(Not like this is any better, but at least this way he can pretend that it’s all Evan’s fault.)

Jared rubs a hand over his eyes, sweeping the tears away so he can see what he’s doing as he pulls his iPhone close to his face. He opens Evan’s text thread and sees the last message Evan had ever sent him, dated over a month ago.

I’d still like to talk, if you’re ever ready, but I won’t push it. Hope you have fun at college.

Jared bites his lip around a sob and makes a split second decision, fueled by his broken-ass brain and emotional distress and the fact that it’s 3am. He hits the button next to Evan’s name to pull up his number, and he presses the ‘call’ button.

His heart skips a beat when he hears the first ring and he realizes what he’s doing.

Shit, he thinks when it rings a second time. You’re actually doing this. Fuck, okay, uh--

The phone rings a third time and he starts to believe that Evan isn’t going to answer, because it’s 3am and Evan is a good boy who goes to sleep at 10pm every night no matter what. Jared used to tease him about it.

But the fourth ring never comes. Instead, the phone clicks as the line connects, and Jared freezes. There’s a soft rustling, a sigh, and then a quiet “H-Hello?”

Jared stops crying. He hasn’t heard that voice, that adorable stammer in months.

“H-Hey, Evan,” he says, trying not to let Evan hear the way his throat is still tight from crying. Apparently, he fails, because Evan suddenly sounds much more awake.

“J-Jared? Are you okay? What’s going on?” he asks frantically. Jared can picture him sitting up straight and frowning at nothing in the dark with worry. It’s strangely comforting.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jared responds. “I just, um. I wanted to talk to you. And you said-- The text-- You said when I was ready…” He trails off, but Evan seems to get it.

“Right!” comes the voice from the other line. “Of course! Listen, I’m really sorry about all that stuff before. W-With Connor and the emails and the whole project and everything...I dragged you into it and didn’t even--I got so caught up in everything that I made it all about me, but you were there too and I didn’t--I never--” He starts to sputter out syllables that doesn’t really sound like words, and Jared waits for him to figure out what he’s saying without interrupting, because he knows that Evan has wanted to get this off his chest for a long time. “I didn’t appreciate you enough until it was too late, and I’m sorry about that. I was a--I was a real ass.”

Jared chokes out a laugh, because that’s not a sentence he ever thought he’d hear Evan Hansen say.

“J-Jared?”

“I’m here, Evan,” Jared says around a mouthful of stupid giggling at the thought of how much courage it used to take Evan to swear even in the privacy of his own home. “I’m sorry, it’s just. You were kind of an ass.”

“Ah, uh, yeah.” Jared’s laughter dies off when he realizes what he has to say next.

“But I was too. I’m sorry.”

Evan makes a strangled sound from the other side of the line and Jared cuts him off before he can start rambling. “I accept your apology,” he starts off with. “But now you’ve gotta let me say my piece, too. I kinda treated you like shit for like, a lot of years, and I don’t think I ever really said sorry for that. So, um. Sorry. For being a dick.”

It’s not exactly a grand apology by any means, but he thinks he got the message across.

“W-What do you mean?”

Okay. So apparently not.

“I meant what I said, Hansen,” Jared grumbles, a little exasperated and a lot exhausted. “Ever since middle school I just kinda treated you like a sidekick, y’know? And once you actually got out there and started hanging out with other people, I guess I just got scared.”

“Why would you be s-scared because of that?” Jared flushes red at the confusion in Evan’s voice.

“Because!” he hisses into the microphone, a little harsher than intended. “You started doing stuff without me, and I felt like you didn’t--I dunno! Like you didn’t need me anymore I guess.” The last part comes out like a question, and he rushes to clarify. “I mean, it’s not like I wanted you to just be dependent on me or whatever but you stopped coming over and even my mom started asking about you. I had to tell her you had plans with your other friends and then explain that I didn’t have other friends besides you and it was horrible every single time. And then I started feeling like you only wanted to be friends with me because of the emails, and I got worried that at some point you’d just figure out how to make them yourself and then you wouldn’t even bother with me anymore.” He only stops when he realizes that he’s out of breath, and his face gets even redder as his brain processes all the shit he’s just spilled to the love of his life over the phone.

There’s a long pause, and Jared sits up in bed, giving up on ever getting sleep tonight as he props himself against a pillow and pulls his knees to his chest. He can still hear Evan breathing over the line. He’s about to apologize again and make some excuse to hang up when he hears a soft sniffle.  
“Ev?” he says, clenching his free hand into a fist.

“I’m fine,” comes Evan’s voice, shaky and vaguely wet. “I’m sorry, I just. I always kinda thought you actually hated me and only put up with me because of your car insurance. I was really worried you wouldn’t even want to talk to me ever again and now we’re on the phone and you just, said all that stuff and I sort of feel like I don’t know anything anymore.”

Jared feels a familiar sense of guilt pool in the pit of his stomach that spurs him to act, to talk, to try and fix all the shit he knows is broken between them right now.

“I, um. I lied to you before,” he begins. “When I said that thing about my car insurance. My mom would’ve paid it anyways. I just said that because…”

He trails off, because he doesn’t know how much is okay to say right now. He knows that the reason he insisted that their friendship revolved around his car insurance was because he wanted Evan to believe that Jared didn’t actually care about him. But that was only distract from the fact that Jared frequently thought about holding his hand and kissing him and a million other things that he knew would freak Evan out if he ever knew. But how does he tell Evan the first part without sounding like a total bag of dicks? He can’t!

“...because I thought I’d scare you off if we ever got, y’know, too close. But I really did--really do care about you.”

“...Jared…” Jared freezes, trying not to go completely fucking scarlet at the way Evan says his name, sounding worried and remorseful and caring.

“Yeah, Ev?”

“...Can we be friends again?” Jared blinks once, then twice, then a third time because he feels tears welling up in his eyes again.

“Yeah, Ev. I’d really like that.”

And then Jared is crying again, and so is Evan, and they’re both such hot fucking messes that it makes Jared laugh a little. He’s sure he sounds hysterical.

In the end, they agree that they should talk more in the morning when they’ve both gotten some rest and calmed down. Evan says goodnight first, stammering over the ‘n’ and Jared smiles before returning the sentiment and clicking the ‘End Call’ button on his phone’s screen.

For several minutes after that, he stares at Evan’s contact picture above his phone number. It’s a picture Jared took himself one afternoon while they played video games together. Evan had been so focused that he hadn’t even noticed Jared snap a picture until it was too late. Jared had reluctantly deleted it, only to fish it out of his ‘Recently Deleted’ folder an hour later to set for Evan’s contact.

He looks at the concentration lines in Evan’s forehead and the way his top teeth press into his bottom lip as he focuses on his objective. He’s so goddamn adorable that Jared thinks he might actually die.

He stares at the picture for just a few minutes before locking his phone, reaching out to put it on the charger, and settling back into his comforter for the night with one last swipe at his eyes to rid them of any stray tears.

Things are going to get better. He’ll be okay. He’s not alone anymore.


End file.
